


Hannibal Advent 2015

by SeymoreSinn



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abigail figures it out, Abigail is a Teenager, Airports are boring, BAMF Molly, BSHCI, Chilton's deep thoughts, Conjoined, Crime Scenes, Dark Will, Eat The Rude, Fame, Family, Fatherhood, Freddie's inner dialogue, Gallows Humor, Hannibal is Hannibal, Hannibal is bad at feelings, Internal Monologue, Lithuanian language, Magic!Empathy, Manipulative Hannibal, Masks, Matthew Brown is cool AF, Memory Palace, Mirror Will, Mizumono Spoilers, No shame, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Possessive Hannibal, Prose Poem, Purple Prose, RHPS quote hunt, Rating May Change, Scents & Smells, Sexism in Science, Someone Help Will Graham, Song Lyrics, Spot the Dante, Star Trek References, Tabloids, The Doors - Freeform, The Great Red Dragon - Freeform, The Wound Man, Whiskey & Scotch, Will is also Bad at Feelings, Wine, misunderstanding of eastern mysticism, more sexual than needed, will is a dork
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 5,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5237276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeymoreSinn/pseuds/SeymoreSinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's my Hannibal Advent Collection!</p><p>One drabble-ish thing for each episode, one-ish a day.</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1, Season 1, Episode 1: Aperitif

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This note is being added on Dec, 27 2015: even though the official timeframe is over, this collection is going to remain a work in progress for me.
> 
> I want to go back and fill in the episodes I missed and probably rework some material I'm not happy with.
> 
> So I hope you enjoyed it, and that you check back every so often to see what's new.

If pressed to explain his actions of the past week — and he’d deigned to give a transparent answer — he’d have to say it was the smell.

Will Graham’s personal scent, to be more specific.

There was really no other way Dr. Lecter could explain his impulsive behavior.

He’d felt it most strongly at the door of the motel room. He’d been standing on the walk, holding breakfast when the Will had opened the door to him. The close, humid air of the room had rolled over him, thick and damp with sleep. The aroma to Hannibal as warm and heavy as fine perfume.

In it’s base notes he could smell dog…several dogs. The settled must of an old house and the mineral tang of well water.

The top notes of cheap motel rooms were perhaps better left unacknowledged.

But there, in the body of the fragrance, was all uniquely *Will*

There was the sharp foxy smell of sweat and testosterone, all burnt sugar and mink, intense in his relative youth — profoundly masculine. But there was the cool, snippid aroma of deep forrest, moss and mud, moving water. Softening the machismo with green and decay.

Running through it all like a single golden thread was a sweet heat, like stem ginger or mulled wine. It flitted across his awareness, clear and bright, a constituent, as yet, undetermined.

But he would try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you know the provenance and definition of 'snippid' without Googling - you win the internet.


	2. Day 2, Season 1, Episode 2: Amuse-Bouche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beverly Katz, BAMF.

Beverly Katz liked to think of herself as tough.

She’d excelled in school, in post-grad, at Quantico. Despite the snide whispers and the looks and the mosh-pit, no-girls-allowed atmosphere of the labs and law-enforcement agencies where she worked and studied.

She was good. She knew it. They knew it. She was not squeamish and she was not afraid of anything.

Then shit like this would happen.

She was trying to remove the tape over the mouth of a (presumed) corpse. The body was so eaten away by fungal growth that the lips and a big glob of cheek came away with it. It made a sort of quiet squelchy-popping sound as it gave, and the wet pulling sensation seemed to lodge itself in the muscles of her arms. She stared at it for a moment, forgot to breathe through her mouth, filling her head with the awful stench of death and compost and softly rotting meat.

Her stomach flipped over and bile rose in the back of her throat. She shut her mouth and swallowed hard. Remembering something an old (female) professor had told her.

_“Sometimes you need to either laugh, vomit or cry. When that happens, remember that laughter is the least messy option.”_

So she swallowed again and cracked a joke about shiitake mushrooms.

Because sometimes, when you are tough, laughter is the only option.


	3. Day 3, Season 1, Episode 3: Potage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teenagers are profoundly weird. But so are middle-aged empathic professors.

Even under the best of circumstances, Abigail Hobbs found airports hella boring and annoying.

Right now was not the best of circumstances.

She was flying back to Minnesota to go home. A home that was now a crime scene more than the house she’d grown up in.

She was also sitting at the terminal with three virtual strangers: her ‘family-trauma’ psychiatrist, the psychiatrist/doctor that kept her from bleeding out on her kitchen floor, and the guy who killed the father responsible for her almost bleeding out on her kitchen floor.

In other words, she was stuck in an airport with the three randos who had somehow become responsible for her. Because her actual family had become a trauma.

Plus all she had for entertainment was the psychology book from the hospital library and Dr. Bloom’s old iPod. That felt like real trauma at the moment.

Dr.’s Bloom and Lecter were sitting across the aisle from her, undoubtedly having an erudite conversation about something pretentious.

Will Graham was sitting next to her looking twitchy and radiating awkward.

Abigail was flipping through 36GB of music. Looking for something - *anything* worth listening to.

She had one earbud in while she scrolled, in case her attention was required for something. Like maybe a bomb-threat.

She clicked on a title that looked sort of familiar. The song was obviously kinda old, but the intro slipped into a great baseline. When the guy started singing she realized why it was familiar. It was from that one scene in that movie she’d watched at Marisa’s 16th birthday party.

Her mom had had a fit when she’d realized what they were watching.

She found herself seat-dancing a little. The beat *was* really good.

She realized belatedly that Will was looking at her. Not like, creepy, but, like, curious, head only half-turned towards her.

She balked for a second, then mentally shrugged. _Fuck it,_ She thought and offered him the other earbud.

He hesitated a moment, then put it in, and listened. He made an ‘it’s good’ face and started bobbing his head a little.

She started seat-dancing again, then mouthed a couple lines at him.

**_"Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right —"_ **

He started mouthing the words too.

**_"Here I am!"_ **

They both started to shimmy their shoulders in a clumsy unison.

**_"Stuck in the middle with you."_ **

They were both getting really into it. Seat-dancing and head bobbing, making faces and pretending they knew all the words.

Will glanced sideways and froze.

She stopped and looked too.

The two classy doctors were staring blankly at them.

She felt herself blush, and looked helplessly at Will.

Their eyes caught…

They both had to hastily cover their mouths as they dissolved in giggles.

_" **Trying to make some sense of it all,**_

**_But I can see that it makes no sense at all,_ **

**_Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,_ **

**_'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore_ **

**_Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,_ **

**_Here I am, stuck in the middle with you"_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Stuck In The Middle" by Steelers Wheel.
> 
> The movie is "Reservoir Dogs."
> 
> If you want to see why this makes me think of Abigail and Will, go here: https://youtu.be/XIMg2Xw4_8s (NSFW)


	4. Day 4, Season 1, Episode 4: Oeuf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the subject of Fatherhood

When Dr. Lecter asked if he was ‘feeling paternal’ Will’s first thought was a sarcastic laugh and a snarky remark. ‘I have no fucking clue what that even means,’ or something along those lines. 

He doesn’t react that way though, partly because he knows Hannibal does not appreciate that sort of language, but mostly because that isn’t who he’s angry with.

He feels he owes the doctor that much, if for nothing other than the ration of shit and trouble Will has given him since this whole business began.

He settles on answering the question with a question. Uses the doctor’s favorite tactic against him. 

Not that he thinks it will rattle the man or anything. Will knows better than that, by now.

Will pauses for a moment. Actually — there are plenty of things Will *thinks* he knows, but does he *really* know? He assumed he knew why Hannibal would do this, see him as a not-really-a-patient. Listen to him, try to help him, put up with him without payment (a double hit to the wallet, as he also gave Will an official time slot that he could give to a paying customer)

He’d assumed it was because of some kind of professional interest. He’d figured that at some point in the future Dr. Lecter would approach him about being the subject of an academic paper.

Then Will could really let him have it.

But now, as Hannibal answered his earlier question in the affirmative. He really had to wonder.

Could hannibal think of him in a way that was less (or more) than professional?

Something fonder, friendlier…almost — fatherly?


	5. Day 5, Season 1, Episode 5: Coquilles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I went on a bit of a 'song-fic' tear, sorry.
> 
> Thanks to all of you that have left me kudos!

Will’s taste in music tended to run to the instrumental. It was easier to listen without the intrusion of some other person’s emotion.

There were exceptions though.

He dug the CD out of the back of the shelf where his modest collection was kept. He wiped the dust off. It’d been that long since he’d listened to it.

He slipped it into his out-of-the-box stereo. He hit play and went to the kitchen to pour himself a couple fingers of whiskey before he attempted sleep.

_People are strange_

_when you’re a stranger_

Hannibal Lecter was known as something of a connoisseur. Like all such, however, he had unexpected tastes.

Unexpected, at least, to those whose minds were to small to see beauty in all its myriad guises.

His poetry books were housed in a pear-wood cabinet, about a 150 years old and immaculate. He habitually kept the doors shut, but not locked. He’d found over the years that this tended to elliminate rude questions posed by visitors.

It saved a great deal of unnecessary mess and cleaning duties within his home.

Tonight he sat in his den, before the fire, with a glass of Irish whiskey with water and a book of poetry by James Douglas Morrison.

_Faces look ugly_

_when you’re alone_

Abigail Hobbs was on something of a vampire movie kick.

Thanks to a borrowed tablet and Dr. Bloom’s ‘stack of iTunes giftcards’ it was an easy enough thing to feed.

She’d been a little young and a lot uninterested for the Twilight books when they’d come out, and the first movie had been so stupid she’d never bothered to see any of the others. A bored search for the term ‘lost boys’ had borne some interesting fruit though.

Because, damn if Kiefer Sutherland hadn’t been 5 kinds of hot in the 80’s. Platinum blonde mullet notwithstanding.

_Women seem wicked_

_when you’re unwanted_

Beverley Katz had an amazing collection of old vinyl, if she didn’t say so herself. Though she did say it, to the people she thought might appreciate it.

Not that there was anybody around to appreciate it with her tonight. But it had been a long day in the lab, and solitude wasn’t unwelcome tonight.

She poured a glass of scotch over ice and drew a hot bath. She lit a couple a candles she kept stuck in old wine bottles on the edge of the tub. While it filled, she sipped her peaty liquor and cued up her turntable. It enjoyed a pride-of-place at the top of the stack that was her huge component stereo.

Her speaker set up could rattle walls.

When she wanted it to. She got out something a little more mellow for right now though.

She put the needle down on the pristine old 78 and headed in to her bath.

_Streets are uneven_

_when you’re down_

Will wasn’t sure how he’d come to this place.

It was cold. It was dark.

He was outside.

In the middle of the road, with headlights bearing down on him from up ahead, and he wondered in a daze —

How had his life come to this?

_When you’re Strange_

_Faces come out of the rain_

_When you’re Strange_

_No one remembers your name_

_When you’re Strange_

_When you’re Strange_

_When you're Strange_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this collection is leading me to believe I have an unhealthy obsession with either song-fics or hard liquor, I leave it up to the reader to pick one.
> 
> The song is 'People Are Strange" by The Doors
> 
> Will is listening to 'The Very Best of the Doors' -- a collection that I'm pretty sure was issued to all college freshmen in my hometown.
> 
> Abigail is watching 'The Lost Boys' which features an excellent cover of 'People Are Strange" by Echo and the Bunnymen
> 
> Jim Morrison's real name is James Douglas Morrison and, yes, he did actually publish some books of poetry. One such belonged to my dad, which I used to read as a child. My memory says the passage quoted by Beverly in this episode was in there too, but Google has neither confirmed nor denied this recollection.
> 
> And actually, I blame Beverly Katz for this whole chapter.


	6. Day 6, Season 1, Episode 6: Entree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peek inside the mind of Lounds

Freddie Lounds often thought about the concept of karma.

Not that she would ever admit it to anybody. Hell, she barely admitted it to herself. She never wrote about it, even.

It was something she’d only ever pondered within the safety of her own skull.

She wondered what she might’ve done to get the life she had now. 

What cosmic law would one need to break (or obey) in order to be born free of shame — free of guilt? Yet to also be born with an almost perfect sense of selfishness. An almost entire lack of interest in other people, beyond what she could get from them.

She neither wanted to hurt, or to help, anyone. She just wanted her opportunity. Her page hits. Her cash.

Now though, sitting across from Crawford and Bloom and Graham, she was not thinking of vague metaphysical ideas.

She was simply grateful not to have ever felt a need for a mask to hide herself from the world.

Because she had the impression that she was sitting across from three people so deeply welded to their various masks that they’d probably forgotten what their faces *actually* looked like.

Lucky Freddie, she’d never know that feeling. She thought.

And smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently planning to go back later and edit/expand on some of these.
> 
> But right now I'm more interested in maintaining a daily writing routine, in getting the ideas out of my head and onto the page, out here for people to see and help keep me honest about it.
> 
> I also don't have a beta, though I'm looking for one.
> 
> So stay tuned if you want to see some of these polished up at some future point.


	7. Day 7, Season 1, Episode 7: Sorbet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paint me a picture of things yet to be...

He watches the doorway for several long moments after Will has gone, thinking.

Wondering.

He had been entirely sincere when he’d disagreed with Will’s own assessment of his ability to be good company. 

At this moment he was thinking he should have tried harder to convince Will to stay. At this moment there is an unfamiliar pang. A twinge of something vaguely melancholic. If pressed he would name it…disappointment, perhaps.

Will would not be at his table tonight, and Hannibal would feel his absence.

A strange thought. A strange sensation.

However, the feast waits for no one, and the are finishing touches to place, hired people to supervise, his person to ready and order for the coming guests.

He tucks the odd thoughts and feelings away to ponder later.

His eyes come to rest on the bottle Will had left. He reaches for it, to check its compatibility with the menu and bottles already in place.  
He stops, mid-reach. A pause — thoughtful.

Hannibal sets his prep bowl aside and goes around the island. He takes the bottle into his pantry and tucks it away. A spot where it is unlikely to be accidentally taken up by the hired caterers.

This too, he will enjoy later.

When the time is right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've seen some speculation that Will's bottle here, is the one that shows up in 'The Wrath of the Lamb' 
> 
> I'm rolling with that idea.


	8. Day 8, Season 1, Episode 8: Fromage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the good Doctor lies to himself.

Hannibal Lecter finds much of life to be entirely predictable.

Much, not all.

He had expected Tobias Budge to come for him, probably during Franklyn’s appointment, so he could kill them both in one go.

He’d expected that, planned for it. He was not disappointed.

When Tobias spoke of killing two men, he hadn’t expected the sudden roil of emotion deep within his gut.

Will would have gone, he would have wanted to conduct the interview himself, to see. To know.

Hannibal’s first reaction was anger, yes, a possessive rage — how *dare* this upstart take Will from him? Will was *his* to destroy or not. To take apart and remake. His alone.

That was not a wholly unexpected reaction to this.

The thing that shocked him was underneath his cool rage. A small voice drifting up from one of the stinking, black oubliettes in his memory palace. So faint, yet ringing so distinct within his head — “aš vienas.”

It is ridiculous, of course. Will Graham dying changes nothing about Hannibal Lecter living.

But that voice, haunting and familiar, repeats. Becoming a back-beat, a counterpoint to the slight increase in his pulse.

Hannibal does not expect his own reaction, but he can still anticipate those of Mr. Budge.

It only takes a few swift steps, movements clean and forceful and precise. A most satisfying crunch, and Franklyn is sprawled dead on the floor.

“I was looking forward to that.”

Now Tobias can know this feeling too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not gonna give you the direct translation from the Lithuanian, because I'm pretending to be deep and have some sort of larger point.
> 
> I did get it from Google Translate, so you can yell at them if it's wrong.
> 
> The book 'Hannibal' goes into a bit of detail about Lecter's oubliettes. Might be a good time to pick it up so you can read better purple prose than mine.


	9. Day 9, Season 1, Episode 9: Trou Normand

Will opens his eyes.

He is standing in Dr. Lecter’s waiting room.

This is not where he closed his eyes.

He can still feel the ghosts of this morning within his senses. The smell of sea and decomposition, old death and fresh blood. His face and the surface of his coat and hat still radiate that coastal chill. A totem of bodies, dark against the bright clouded sky, burnt into the back of his eyes.

He does not know how he got here. There is a sick, dropping, rolling sensation in the pit of his stomach. He feels a brief stab of embarrassed fear that he’s going to vomit all over the carpet.

“Will?”

The doctor himself, in the office door. Ready to go out. Will wonders inconsequentially if he’s stepping out for lunch.

“I wasn’t expecting you.” 

Will feels a sudden barrage of conflicting emotions. Confusion and fear, concern and something…something…triumphant. He’s afraid again that he might be sick, he’s unsure where these feelings are coming from; himself, the Totem Killer? Or Dr. Lecter — who’s face in the doorway is a mask of concern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was really effing hard to write.
> 
> I don't know why that is, but I hope ya'll appreciate how I suffer for you ;)


	10. Day 10, Season 1, Episode 10: Buffet Froid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the good doctor makes a choice.

Hannibal Lecter is generally of the opinion that decisions are made of many small pieces. Many small bits of emotion falling into place, kneading together until the mind deigns to assign a grand moment to it. A false feeling of importance attached to an arbitrary slice of time.

However, upon sober reflection, Hannibal Lecter would also agree that there was a definitive moment in which Dr. Donald Sutcliffe signed his own death warrant.

“We know how Iberico choses his pigs. How did you chose yours?”

“Are you referring to Will Graham?”

Oh yes, that decision had a definitive moment indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, I did an actual 100 word Drabble. Who'd've thought?
> 
> I know that the show makes out like Dr. Sutcliffe was doomed from the start, that Hannibal was always planning to use him to frame Will. 
> 
> But seriously, watch that moment where Sutcliffe calls Will a pig.
> 
> Mads micro-expressions FTW.


	11. Day 11, Season 1, Episode 11: Roti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddie loves to meet famous people.

Freddie has found herself in some strange places over the course of her career, but nothing quite like this.

She’s been in the company of some pretty famous (infamous) people too, but, again — never quite like this.

She never expected to meet Dr. Paul Carruthers, seated proper behind a huge oak desk. Drained dry of blood and with his tongue pulled back down his throat and threaded out a hole in his neck to lie slowly undulating on his sternum.

She’d never wanted to meet Dr. Abel Gideon without a double-thick, transparent barrier between them. Especially not when he had a gun.

She never thought she’d be Dr. Frederick Chilton’s personal life-support machine while his innards lay resplendent across his belly.

More than anything else, she never thought she’d hear Jack Crawford’s voice broken with a note of panic-y fear as he called for a medic.

Yes, this situation won the prize for strange.


	12. Day 12, Season 1, Episode 12: Releves

“Abigail?”

She hears that familiar voice and feels a wave of relief so intense it’s almost painful. She launches herself at him with nary a thought, caught in an embrace made of cologne and green wool and strong, warm arms.

For a moment she is as safe as a baby in its cradle.

But Hannibal talks, she questions him, he answers. Disconnected thoughts fall into place and that feeling of safety vanishes like a puff of smoke.

“How many people have you killed?”

“Many more than your father.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

He is silent, then steps closer.

* * *

He sees the moment she puts it all together, and he is proud of her.

She is more worthy of being his and Will’s daughter than he had hoped.

She is so afraid, he can smell it on her, yet she stays by him — trembling and obedient. She is still as he touches her face, blue-green eyes great with fear, fragile yet trusting and strong.

Her father had been right, she really is the perfect lure.

As such, she is deserving of his complete honesty.

“I am so sorry Abigail. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you in this life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I reeeeeaalllly wanted to do a bit about Will's "You made me chicken soup." crack -- which is seriously my favorite effing moment in the entire series. No joke, I snort a laugh every time I see it.
> 
> However, this thing crawled into my head like an ear-worm and wouldn't let any good chicken soup drabbles form.
> 
> So you get this business instead.
> 
> Enjoy!


	13. Day 13, Season 1, Episode 13: Savoureux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He was tired of being disliked."
> 
> \- Thomas Harris

“Show me.” Hannibal had told him, then later; “get dressed.”

“Interpret the evidence.” Beverley had ordered (challenged?) him.

“Draw me a clock.” Alana said in a gentle tone that nevertheless brooked no refusal.

“That’s not an argument you want to be making to me right now.” Jack warned him sometime later.

It seemed to Will that he spent an awful lot of time, lately, being told what to do.

He was tired of being directed, ordered, disregarded, led.

When he does manage to get ahead of himself - with a dislocated thumb for his troubles - all he manages to do it terrify the one person he thought was unequivocally on his side.

Instead Alana had tried to get him caught.

So he went to Hannibal.

He thought of Hannibal as a friend, if a strangely dedicated friend. Hannibal might have been his first stop if Abigail’s death hadn’t still weighted between them.

That and the fact that Alana’s loft had been nearer to where he’d escaped, but that was incidental.

He trusted Hannibal not to direct or order or disregard him. He was hoping for guidance.

He found the confidence to issue an order of his own: “take me to Minnesota.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one that ended up being *insanely* hard to write.
> 
> Next up: Season 2!!


	14. Day 14, Season 2, Episode 1: Kaiseki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, there goes that G rating...

He remembers, suddenly, the feeling of plastic against his throat — in his throat. Large hands, vaguely warm within their wrappings, and a long cool tube forcing it’s way into the heat of his esophagus.

He remembers the way it slowly took on the heat of his blood.

Hannibal’s face above him, laser focused on the flex and give of Will’s inner workings as he pulls out. Tenderly stroking across his face and down his neck — softly asking him to swallow, asking him to take what Hannibal has to give.

Next he knows, Will is back on his cot at the BSHCI, gasping down at his dinner. The image of half-chewed chunks of mystery meat overlaid with Abigail’s ear.

The smooth rolled edge of the plastic tray is pressing a line across his half-hard cock.

Will isn’t sure what horrifies him the most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please pardon the delay, but my muse is a temperamental bitch and we had a fight over how sexual this chapter was allowed to be.


	15. Day 15, Season 2, Episode 2: Sakizuke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our sad cannibal reflects upon his emotions.

James Grey was a pleasant distraction, but only for a moment.

Hannibal finds himself, once again, sitting across from an empty chair at 7:30 on a Thursday night. Waiting for some one who will not — cannot — come to him.

Hannibal is not used to this. This feeling of *missing* — of a specific person’s presence being so intimately absent. 

He had not experienced it since Mischa. Even those feelings are glazed with the glow of childhood emotion. Softening the jagged edges of that long-ago loss. The feeling now, as unfamiliar as it is, is sharpened and refined by his adult sensibility. He knows now, how high the stakes are.

The whole situation conspires to make him angry and maudlin by turns.

Regret is not something Hannibal Lecter knows how to handle.

He is, however, very much a goal-oriented man.

If he can do something, he is most certainly capable of undoing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am unforgivably wordy. It happens when I try to get into Hannibal's head. Mea Culpa


	16. Day 16, Season 2, Episode 3: Hassun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our boys are bad at feelings.

“I don’t want you here.” Hannibal admits, a tendril of regret curls between them.

“I don’t want me here either.” Will answers, a jagged cut of words.

The air is thick with emotions and neither man is entirely sure from whom it originates, neither is sure what to name them.

Is Will simply mirroring Hannibal, or is Hannibal just reflecting Will?

Neither one quite knows what the other is thinking.

Exentually, Hannibal speaks again;

“This killer wrote you a poem. Are you going to let his love go to waste?”

Will has no real response, except to wonder…which killer?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a beta reader. For some reason I think it comes across really strongly here. Just FYI.


	17. Day 17, Season 2, Episode 4: Takiawase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peak into the mind of Chilton

Dr. Chilton knows, deep down, that he is not as good as he presents himself to be.

He knows, but he does not dwell on it more than is strictly necessary. 

There are other ways to get what he wants from the world. Talent is the provenance of the few, cunning, persistence and a certain moral flexibility were resources left for the masses to squabble over.

Luckily for Frederick he was born with all of these later attributes in spades.

Or so he tells himself.

A lie that at once covers and props up the shabby truth.

He prepares a syringe for Mr. Graham.


	18. Day 18, Season 2, Episode 5: Mukozuke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It which we meet the one, the only, the incomparable - Matthew Brown.

Matthew Brown thinks of himself as a bird of prey — metaphorically.

Sometimes, though, he can feel it.

He feels the power in his muscles. It lives in the pull of his shoulders against water in the pool, in the flex of his core as he does dead lifts in the gym , the bunch and resistance of his quads over rough forrest trail.

He feels it in his mind when he shorts out the mic system in the asylum great-room, or scrambles the HR database just enough that the background check doesn’t catch his false information.

It’s the simple things in life, that allow him to fly over the heads of sheep.

But he felt it also in his solitude. The magnificent expanse of light and air around his wings, devoid of other birds to look down with him.

That which makes us exceptional is also that which isolates us.

A friend, a real friend — someone that could know him and the world as he knows them — would be a rare a precious prize. 

Something worthy of the work it would take to get it.

Thought, to be honest the biggest bitch about this job would be finding the right kind of bucket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have kind of a thing for the Matthew Brown character.
> 
> If you do too, you should go read this: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5197013/chapters/11976455
> 
> Though, actually you should read the whole series for a variety of reasons :)


	19. Day 19, Season 2, Episode 6: Futamono

He’s a male, late 30’s at least — probably older. He is practiced. He is in control.

He has anatomical knowledge. He’s a surgeon or a pathologist. Maybe a butcher, or perhaps a vet?

She isn’t sure if he’s white. There’s something exotic about him somehow. 

Miriam knows that probably sounds bad, but she can’t think of any other way to describe the particular “flavor” of this killer.

He is extremely courteous, he values politeness. There is something about his victims that offends this sensibility.

At times he is a blur of overlapping sensory input. A bright strobing light, overlaid by chamber music — like some sort of surrealist dance club. The sweet smell of fresh flowers and the sting of a very fine needle.

She floats in this way, lost in her profile and a shifting sea of sensations. Lost to the Earth, lost in time and space.

She can know only his will, and his voice in her head. A phantom of touch on the arm she no longer has.

In her mind, she has named him…

The Wound Man.


	20. Day 20, Season 2, Episode 7: Yakimono

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A game that two can play.

Will comes to Hannibal, in his kitchen, reeking of dreadful aftershave. He must have gone straight home from the BSHCI to shower and change.

Then come straight here.

Right into the monster’s lair, to point a gun at his head.

Hannibal has lost his ability to completely predict Will…

…if he’d ever really been able to.

After their firearm assisted “conversation,” Will went away and Hannibal had a glass of wine to try and get that awful smell out of his nose. The cloying scent of carnations always seemed to linger…

Well…perhaps two could play at that game.

A quick call to his personal shopper was all it took. 

The package arrived at his office the next afternoon, the bottle decor was admittedly tacky. But the scent, after it had settled on his skin, was redolent of musk and salt, sweet-ish and powdery. It put him in mind of milk and blood, sweaty sheets...

Oh well. Now he waits.

Hannibal is not disappointed.

For when Will next appears, it is once again on Lecter’s turf. There is a knock at the door, bang-on 7:30.

He sets his wine aside and goes to admit Will, who wants to resume his therapy. Officially.

Now that is a surprise.

They talk, they share a glass of wine. As Hannibal hands the glass over, their fingers brush. He notices Will’s nostrils flair.

The doctor goes back to his seat as Will eyes him sideways through his lashes.

Hannibal can’t remember the last time he’d passed such a pleasant evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter owes a big nod to the fic "My Gun, Your Head" by Nightshadeispoison for the most *amazing* Hannibal perfume headcannon.
> 
> Because - holy shit - if Etat Libre d'Orange Secretions Magnifiques isn't the kind of thing our good Doctor would wear.


	21. Day 21, Season 2, Episode 13: Mizumono

The night is awash in water and blood.

Rain and tears and uncomfortable truths, salt-bitter on the tongue.

Broken promises — as sharp as shards of shattered glass.

Lives are lost. Identities are fractured. What lies beneath is brought forth into the light. Polished hard into a glittering brightness…

A shimmer of falling stars and words. Poetry written in heartache. 

Their broken pieces fall through the night, like meteors!

Water and glass,

Tears and blood.

Bruises and betrayal.

Time becomes syrupy, moving slow and cold.

At some point the water falling on his face goes hot, and the static in his head becomes the calming rush of a shower. He cleans away blood that is all his, even though it was not all from his own body.

At some point the hot flood across his lower body goes cold, and the roaring in his ears becomes the quiet babel of the the river. A river of blood that is all over his hands, even as they hold the rod to cast a line.

He feels a hitch in the quiet susurrus of his breathing.

Does he weep?

Or do his lungs simply cease to breathe?

They are conjoined, a family made in death.

Born awash in water and blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, this was so hard.
> 
> I tried to write the points between Yakimono and Mizumono, but this piece sort of insisted on being next. I might come back and add the in-between drabbles later, but for now I'm done fighting it and will proceed onto Season 3.


	22. Day 34, Season 3, Episode 8: The Great Red Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Francis Dolarhyde

Everybody has their demons.

Some people have more or less, others have bigger or smaller, but everybody has one or two at least.

The general consensus is that demons were a bad thing and must be purged. Conquered.

Subdued.

Francis knew this. He knew this very well. He had learned his lessons at Grandmother’s hands. Ungentle hands that were gnarled with age, with the skin spread cracked and wrinkled and papery-thin. Hands he could see beneath his own muscle and bone. Weak things, wasted things, waiting to be revealed by the inevitable erosion of time.

But it took the seeing face of his un-lived potential to teach him a far better lesson.

It was almost the inverse of everything he’d learned in his early life.

The first time he saw The Great Red Dragon, he knew. The thought came to him, entire, perfect and complete in a moment.

Yes — one could subdue one’s demons. Learn to tolerate and ignore them, perhaps. To the best of one’s ability.

Or — one could embrace them. Live with them and cherish them. Hold them close and learn their deathly secrets.

One could learn to love them.

Become them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course life intruded on my plans for Hannibal Advent, but I will give you the Red Dragon arch if it kills me.


	23. Day 35, Season 3, Episode 9: And the Woman Clothed with the Sun...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the good doctor waxes poetic and the author quotes a little Trek.

Hannibal knows that Will is there. Just beyond the door.

He does not know how he knows this, only that he does.

He does not turn, merely tilts his chin up the slightest bit. He closes his eyes and inhales through his nose and slightly parted lips, letting his tongue assist his ever-sensitive nose.

And — yes, there! Just as the door creaks open, he catches it. Buried under dreadful aftershave (worse than the dreck with the ship on the bottle, if that were possible) rich and addictive, is the smell of him, his good Will.

If pressed to, Hannibal would say he isn’t sure exactly when it happened, when Will became family. 

It’s true, in it’s way, he knows when he became aware of the change, not when the change took place.

As he had explained once to Abigail, we are attuned to our families. We know that they are there even when our senses are blinded to them.

Hannibal does not know when his sense of the other man passed out f the realm of his physical senses into that hazy country known as intuition. 

He knows only that it has.

When he does turn to look at last, the sight is like a draft of cool wine after long abstention.

Like a hungry child that does not know why it needs, he knows only that he does.


	24. Day 36, Season 3, Episiode 10: The Woman Clothed in Sun

Francis needs the Red Dragon.

Francis wants Reba.

He knows that one of these things should retain primacy over the other, but still, they war with themselves. They war within him.

Reba…

Who kisses him, talks to him. Lays her head in his lap and sucks him.

Knowing him in a way no one has ever…

But the Dragon…must be fed. Pacified. Subdued—

Paper sucks the moisture from his tongue, his mouth. A desiccation from which is borne the master of his life. A destiny he cannot escape.

The pigment is bitter, chemical salts, chalk and graphite, sharp within his mouth. Pulling forth the water of his mouth, of his desire for the Dragon.


	25. Day 37, Season 3, Episode 11: ...And the Beast from the Sea

If you had asked her last week, “are you tough?” She’d have scoffed a gentle laugh and shaken her head.

If you had asked, “would you die for your child?” She’d have agreed without hesitation, shrugging and thinking about it in an abstract ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ sort of way.

If you asked her, “what happens when someone gets shot?” She’d have said “they die,” accompanied by a hint of side eye.

Somebody had asked her if she would support her husband completely.

She had agreed without hesitation.

But that was then.

This is now.

Now: Molly Graham knew better.


	26. Day 38, Season 3, Episode 12: The Number of the Beast is 666...

Will Graham is a man divided against himself.

And as such, he cannot stand.

For Jack, he is a brilliant profiler racing against the clock.

For Alana he is a fragile little tea-cup, eggshell thin porcelain sitting precarious on the table’s edge.

For Molly and Walter he is a loving, fucked up train-wreck of a husband and father.

For Chilton he is hard-to-get, haughty and lovely — a shining symbol of the respect that still alludes.

For Bedelia he is reasonably authentic, inasmuch-as the way he personally feels, rather than how he wants her to feel about him.

For Freddie …well, actually he’d probably always behave the same way towards Freddie Lounds.

So…Will Graham is a man divided against himself.

Moreover, he is not much of a man by the light of day.

Half a man would probably be more accurate.

His “other half” so to speak, is probably the only person on earth — now or ever — who knows him entire.

A half he has been separate from for far to long…

And, as such, he can not stand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I snuck a RHPS quote in there somewheres.
> 
> Just saying.


	27. Day 39, Season 3, Episode 13: The Wrath of the Lamb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The line about sadness and the sea comes from a book. I cannot for the life of me remember where I read it. Google has failed me.
> 
> If you know it -- drop me a line so I can credit the appropriate party.

He can feel the moment they shift free of gravity.

A gentle sway of their embrace, tipped sideways…

And they are free.

Because they cannot stand separately, so together do they fall.

They are as one, in black blood and white moonlight.

They plummet through the night, a red blaze of glory.

Seen only for an moment.

Extinguished like a candle,

Like a wish —

In sadness and the sea.

The Raven Stag,

The Bleeding Wolf,

The Sacrificial Lambs.

For those that fate has drawn together,

Let none put asunder.

Because there was ever really…

Only one way this could end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly you guys, I'm a poet more than a prose writer.
> 
> In case anyone was wondering.
> 
> Stay tuned for a special Boxing Day bonus coda!


	28. Day 40, Season ?, Episode ?: Footnote

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A special Footnote for Boxing day.

It wasn’t the sort of thing Will had expected to see lying around in a place like this, and also not the sort of thing he would normally consider listening to.

As if that wasn’t the story of his life.

He put the disk into the hideous modern stereo, cued it up. The first track he vaguely remembered hearing and not liking some years ago, so he skipped it.

**_The world is holy, the soul is holy…_ **

This he remembered, more than remembered. This was like a thing he’d always known, but temporarily put from his mind. Or perhaps had simply tucked it away, much as he had found it, in a corner of his memory palace, for the day when he would need it.

**_Holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars…_ **

The moment felt dream-like, and yet not. As though he had fallen asleep only to discover he was — in fact — finally awake.

_**Holy the hideous human angels…** _

Something in the voice ringing in the room made him wonder if this was really what he’d been waiting for all along. Not the man in the kitchen or the woman in the dining room, but this moment of final homecoming. Of — at long last — belonging in this fractured mind, this feral heart. Housed within this scared and battered body wearing a pair of borrowed underpants and sitting on the corner of a strange bed in a strange house.

_**Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets…** _

He stays like this for a moment, absorbing. Then the door opens and soft footsteps come his way.

**_Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time…_ **

A large warm hand settles, slow and deliberate on his naked shoulder. For the first time in Will’s memory he neither flinches nor suppresses a flinch. He accepts the touch, and the man touching him, as easily as he breathes, without thought or reason.

**_Holy the sea…_ **

The hand presses, taking the weight of its owner farther forward. A cheek, clean shaven brushes softly against his temple.

**_Holy forgiveness! Mercy! Charity! Faith! Holy! Ours! Bodies! Suffering! Magnanimity!_ **

The hand slides a little farther, fingers brushing the edge of a raw scar, and Will felt —

**_Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem here is Allen Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl" and there are a few pretty widely available recordings of the man himself reading the work.
> 
> Why does this piece make me think of post-season 3 Will? That is an excellent question. The best answer I have is that I once had a similar epiphany to the one described here while listening to to a recording of Ginsberg reading. I realized that the mental illness I suffered with was just as 'holy' as the mind I thought I should have.
> 
> And "Hannibal" -- both the show itself and the fandom -- have helped me make a measure of peace with my demons. As strange as it sounds.
> 
> So this is my tribute. To the art that lets us express, and accept, and embrace, everything that we are.


End file.
